Thread by @RevYinkaAdeleke

I NEARLY FELL FOR THE LURE OF THE OCCULT
In the season of life that my Dad was a lapsed Christian, being an inquisitive fellow, he experimented with a few esoteric belief systems and religious practices, and some of them were Eastern religions.
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He didn't really go deeply into any one of them. I guess that he was just curious to see what else was out there apart from the Islam that he was born into and the Christianity that he had embraced later in life.
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As a result, he had in his collection books on Rosicrucianism, Hinduism, Buddhism, New Ageism and a cornucopia of "self-actualization" manuals that promised to help you get in touch with your "real self" and tap into the powers of the universe.
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Of course, being a highly inquisitive child and a budding epistemophilic, I eagerly devoured these books along with those on other subjects in my father's collection and thus began my short, but intense journey into the metaphysical world.
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I read about auras and how to read them.
I read about astral projection and astral travelling.
I read about clairvoyance, telepathy, telekinesis and a host of other paranormal phenomena. And the more I read, the more intrigued I became.
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I mean, what self-respecting 10-year-old would not be excited about the ability to project his astral self out of his body? Or travel through portals and dimensions? Or be able to read people's minds? Or move objects with his thoughts?
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By the way, and this is NOT meant as a criticism, but when I hear Christians talking today about portals and dimensions, I just have flashbacks to those days of dabbling in that hodge-podge of Eastern mysticism and wonder why CHRISTIANS are raving about all these things...
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...as if they just received some mind-blowing revelations from God. Is this not rebranded New-Ageism and well-packaged occultism trying to seep into the Body under the guise of "fresh revelation"?
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Anyway, these were the tantalizing possibilities that these books and manuals presented before me, and they showed in clear, practical ways how to go about doing those things! So I started practicing!
I began by learning to read auras...
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...and gradually began moving into telepathy and astral projection.
Wait, are those things real?
Oh, you bet they are!
But they are nothing but Satan's trick to enslave the souls of men by offering them an illusion of power.
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Now you are wondering, what in the world was a 10-year-old kid doing playing around with such dangerous mystical practices?
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2 things...
First, I have said a few times now that I was an extremely inquisitive kid who had discovered new worlds in the pages of books, and that caused me to explore every bit of new knowledge that presented itself to me, both the good and the bad.
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Second, I believe that Satan had some inkling as to what God wanted to use me for in the future and wanted to pollute the spring of my life through unclean mystical practices and use them to win me over to his side to forestall the fulfilment of my destiny.
But God won!
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I gave my life to Christ in 1996, got baptized in the Holy Spirit shortly after my salvation experience and began to study the Bible actively and listen to the sound teaching of God's Word. Then I came across a book by Rebecca Brown, "He Came to Set the Captives Free"...
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...and that was when I had the epiphany that what I had been dabbling in all along was nothing but a gateway to occultism, pure and simple, and that it would place me in bondage to the power of the devil.
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So, I went before God and repented of all those practices. Prayed for cleansing by the blood of Jesus. Renounced every act of mysticism, and then gathered all the mystical books, manuals and materials in our house in a pile in our compound and burned them all...
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...(although my Dad was not happy with it, but I insisted that it needed to be done).
And I have had no regrets!
In the past 29 or so years, I have had some amazing spiritual experiences through the agency of the Holy Spirit...
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...that have convinced me that what Satan was peddling to me then was nothing but a cheap imitation of what has been truly given in Christ - pretty much like someone offering you a 14-inch black and white TV when you have access to a 105-inch Ultra 4K smart TV.
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So, today, Day 37 of #40DaysOfGratitude towards my 40th birthday, I am grateful to God for not allowing me to go down the path of occultism and satanic mysticism, and rescuing my destiny from corruption.
Father, I am grateful.
#JourneyTo40
© Adeyinka J. Adeleke
16/05/2024

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